Janet Eastman, animatrice de l'émission, discute de réseautage entre pairs, d'infographie tridimensionnelle, de capteurs tridimensionnels et de facteurs humains avec John Stewart, chef d'équipe du CRC : Réalité virtuelle en réseau.
Date : janvier 2007
Durée : 3 minutes, 34 secondes
*Cette transcription est fournie dans la langue d'origine de l'entrevue télévisée.

Eastman - Louis we've had audio reproduction going back as early as the twentieth century. It has evolved considerably to the point where we've got surround sound. You're working here at the CRC with a goal to improving surround sound. What are you doing?
Thibault - So, as you pointed out, we started audio reproduction with one channel in the early part of the twentieth century. Then we migrated in two channel stereo, which has been with us for decades now. More recently surround sound was introduced and in surround sound what we have is five, what we call 5.1 loud speaker. There is three loud speakers deployed in the front of the listener and two loud speakers slightly to the rear. And the .1 stands for what we call a subwoofer, a very low frequency loud speaker. So the goal of our research in surround sound is to generate know-how as well as automated tool to allow audio engineer in the future to make more realistic and very high quality surround sound recording. Even though surround sound systems are available on the market right now when you buy a home theatre system, for instance, you get a surround sound system. We realize at the CRC that there was very little fundamental knowledge that to understand how to recreate some very specific special sound effect using this multi-loud speaker format.

E - What kind of facilities do you have here where you can actually test out what you're doing?
T - We have at CRC two calibrated listening rooms. Those are very high quality room that meet very stringent international standard in terms of acoustical specification. Those two rooms are extremely quiet first of all; you can't hear any noise from the outside. The other interesting things about those listening rooms is that the ceiling and the wall have been treated with special panel that makes the acoustical properties of this room excellent, top notch in terms of audio reproduction. I would call those rooms the nirvana in terms of audio reproduction and there is only, I would like to add, there is only a handful of those rooms that have been built around the world.

E - Now when you look at your research and what you're trying to do, what is the commercial opportunity for what will come out of CRC here?
T - Basically the know-how and the tool that will be generated. The tool will eventually end up in recording equipment that are used by audio engineering to generate surround sound recording. The know-how also will be used by those same engineers to make the best recording that it can do.

E - And why do you think that it's so important to get that perfection so that it sounds exactly like we would hear it with our bare ears?
T - I think there is a tradition in audio reproduction for very high fidelity. There's a community out there that is longing for very high quality reproduction. We call those people audiophile. Also having a very good surround sound recording that accompanies movies will make the experience of watching movies much more enjoyable.